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Gaim::Log::Mailer 0.01
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NAME
Gaim::Log::Mailer - Have your Gaim/Pidgin logs mailed to you
SYNOPSIS
use Gaim::Log::Mailer;
my $mailer = Gaim::Log::Mailer->new();
$mailer->process();
# ~/.gaimlogmailer.yml
logfile: /tmp/gaimlogmailer.log
email_to: foo@bar.com
min_age: 3600
throttle_interval: 3600
throttle_max_emails: 10
DESCRIPTION
Have you ever wanted to look at the content of an IM conversation you
had earlier? But you couldn't, because you had the conversation on a
different system than the one you're using now? You need to centralize
your Gaim/Pidgin logs.
Gaim::Log::Mailer figures out if you have new IM conversations in your
Gaim log directory and mails them to your account, so you have them
available in your email, which you can check, wherever you are.
This module comes with a script "gaimlogmailer" which just reads in a
YAML configuration file (usually ~/.gaimlogmailer.yml>, then processes
availabe logs up to an adjustable threshold, sends them nicely formatted
to the specified email address and then exits.
It is recommended that you run this script in a cronjob, to make sure
all new IM conversations are picked up and forwarded. For example,
here's a cronjob that runs "gaimlogmailer" every hour on the 13th
minute:
$ crontab -l
13 * * * * /path/to/gaimlogmailer
Configuration
The configuration file "~/.gaimlogmailer.yml" specifies a number of
parameters that "gaimlogmailer" needs to operate. They are given in YAML
format, which basically just means
# comment
key: value
and comment lines are ignored. Strings need to be enclosed in quotes.
For details on this format, check http://yaml.org.
Here are the parameters in detail:
email_to
(Mandatory) The email address the script sends the log to.
logfile
(Optional) The log file where the script logs all activity, using
Log4perl.
logfile: "/tmp/gaimlogmailer.log"
(Note the quotes, YAML insists on them here).
min_age
(Optional, defaults to 3600). The minimum number of seconds a log
file needs to stay untouched by the Gaim application before the
mailer processes it. Reason for this is that there is no way to
figure out if Gaim is done writing a log file or if it will still
append to it at some point.
The mailer knows this and won't mail a file that has a modification
date younger than "min_age" seconds in the past to make sure no
half-written log files are processed. However, this method isn't
bullet-proof, and the mailer deals with this situation: if the
mailer notices that an already processed file has new data, it will
process it again. This way, you'll get two emails, so make sure this
happens rarely and choose min_age accordingly and wisely.
throttle_interval
(Optional, defaults to 3600/10). A new installation of gaimlogmailer
might find thousands of logfiles which need to be mailed out one by
one. To avoid overwhelming the mail system or triggering spam
filters, the number of emails can be limited to
"throttle_max_emails" per "throttle_interval".
For example, if you want gaimlogmailer to only send a maximum of 10
emails per hour, set
throttle_interval: 3600
throttle_max_emails: 10
in your configuration file. Even if the script is rate-limited in
this way, it'll pick up slowly and handle all logs eventually.
throttle_max_emails
See "throttle_interval".
exclude_words
A list of blank-separated words
# configuration file
exclude_words: maybe thanks thx doesn hey put already
languages
A blank-separated list of languages the term extractor should try.
# Try English and German
languages: en de
Mail Preferences
Gaim::Log::Mailer uses Mail::DWIM to send out mail. By default, it uses
a sendmail daemon on the local machine, if you want something else, you
can change the local .maildwim file and specify a different transport
(e.g. SMTP). See the Mail::DWIM documentation for details.
References
This module is based on an article I wrote for the German Linux
Magazine, where IM logs were sent to an IMAP server:
http://www.linux-magazin.de/heft_abo/ausgaben/2007/06/gespraechsprotokol
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LEGALESE
Copyright 2008 by Mike Schilli, all rights reserved. This program is
free software, you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
terms as Perl itself.
AUTHOR
2008, Mike Schilli